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Wednesday, September 24, 2014

The rise of the Islamic State: Who is to blame?

RSIS
Commentary is a platform to provide timely and, where appropriate,
policy-relevant commentary and analysis of topical issues and contemporary
developments. The views of the authors are their own and do not represent the
official position of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, NTU.
These commentaries may be reproduced electronically or in print with prior
permission from RSIS and due recognition to the author(s) and RSIS. Please
email: RSISPublications@ntu.edu.sgfor feedback to the Editor RSIS Commentary, Yang Razali Kassim.

No. 188/2014 dated 23 September 2014

The rise of the Islamic State:Who is to blame?

By James M. Dorsey

Synopsis

Behind the façade of a united front against the Islamic State the United States
and its Gulf allies blame each other for the spectacular rise of the jihadist
group that has overrun a swathe of Syria and Iraq. With the launching of US-led
air attacks on Islamic State targets in Syria itself, Syrian president Bashar
Al Assad is likely to emerge as a winner while his allies Russia and Iran lie
low about their abetting of the Islamic State.Commentary

THE US-LED coalition marshalled to confront the Islamic State, the brutal
jihadist group that controls a large swathe of Syria and Iraq, has
launched systematic air strikes against IS positions and targets in Syria as
well as Iraq. They comprised besides the US, Saudi Arabia, United Arab
Emirates, Bahrain and Jordan as well as Qatar in a supportive role.

Before the airstrikes began, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif
charged that most of the alliance’s members, whom he dubbed a “coalition
of repenters”, had contributed to the Islamic State’s rise by supporting armed
opposition to the regime of Bashar Al-Assad. While not far off the mark the
Iranian minister would have hit the nail squarely on the head had he included
Russia, a member of the coalition, as well as his own country, though it had
not been invited to the alliance’s founding meeting in Paris earlier this
month.

Sharing responsibility
for IS

If anything, Russia and Iran may even share a greater responsibility because as
Assad’s main backers they were more likely to have been privy to the Syrian
leader’s grand strategy to defeat the popular uprising-turned armed rebellion
against him. If Iran blames the United States for supporting the Syrian rebels,
the US’ Arab allies argue that Washington’s failure to supply moderate Syrian
rebels with the sophisticated weaponry and funding they needed to defeat
Assad’s forces or allow Gulf states to do so, had created a vacuum that the
Islamic State filled.

Frustrated by the US failure, as a result, Gulf states and Turkey aided a host
of rebels groups, including the Islamic State, in a bid to topple Assad with or
without full-fledged US support. Their resolve was strengthened by the fact
that Assad enjoyed the support of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and its Lebanese
Shiite ally Hezbollah.

In doing so, the US and its allies walked into the trap Assad had set for them.
For much of the last three years of bitter fighting in Syria that has killed an
estimated 160,000 people and displaced 6.5 million others, Assad’s forces have
confronted non-jihadist forces rather than those of the Islamic State in Syria
and the Levant (ISIL), the name by which the group was known before it
rebranded itself as the Islamic State in June. Assad’s sparing of the jihadists
was designed to allow them to emerge as the dominant force rallied against him
so that he could project himself as indispensable in the struggle to contain
Islamist extremism.

Syrian support for jihadists dates back to aid provided by the Assad government
to Al Qaeda in Iraq for its’ targeting of US troops, according to documents
captured by American forces in 2007 in Iraq’s Sinjar mountains and published by
the US Military Academy at West Point. The documents revealed that Syria facilitated
the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq. Many of them were Saudi and North
African nationals, who today are among the largest of Islamic States’ foreign
fighter contingents. They utilise the same support structures and logistics
networks that were originally established in Iraq with Syrian aid. Moreover,
several Islamic State operatives are men who were detained by Syrian
authorities on charges of terrorism and later released in a series of general
amnesties, according to The New York Times.

A
win-win strategy
Assad’s strategy has worked well. Islamic State has emerged as the Syrian
leader’s foremost opponent. The United States and its allies struggled with how
to confront the group not only in Iraq but also in Syria without legitimising
or cooperating with the one Arab leader whose ouster they sought. Irrespective
of whatever strategy the allies develop, Assad benefits. Cooperation with his
regime as is being demanded by Russia would bring Assad in from the cold. If
the coalition opts to take on the Islamic State in Syria without coordination
with Damascus, Assad can sit back as his enemies confront the most immediate
threat to his regime and do the dirty work for him.

It is hard to believe that Iran and Russia with their intimate involvement in
the Assad regime’s battle for survival had been oblivious to the Syrian
leader’s nurturing of jihadist forces first in Iraq and, since the eruption of
widespread opposition to his regime in 2011, in Syria itself. It was a high
risk strategy for both Russia, with its soft underbelly in the Caucasus
repeatedly wracked by jihadist violence, and Iran that sits at one extreme of
the Middle East’s increasing Sunni-Shiite divide.

Like with US and Gulf policy failures and mistakes, Russia and Iran’s high-risk
gamble resembles a chicken that has come home to roost, witness Russia’s
inclusion in the US-led alliance against Islamic State and Iran’s support for
the war against the group. Their opposition to Islamic State is nonetheless
tempered by their efforts to legitimise Assad by insisting that he be
acknowledged in military strikes against the group inside Syria. There is
little reason to doubt Russia and Iran’s sincerity in wanting to confront the
Islamic State. That however does not erase the legitimate suspicion that they
more than others were witting accomplices in IS’ rise given the nature of their
involvement with the Assad regime.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International
Studies as Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, co-director of the
Institute of Fan Culture of the University of Würzburg and the author of the
blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, and a forthcoming book with
the same title.

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About Me

James M DorseyWelcome to The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer by James M. Dorsey, a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. Soccer in the Middle East and North Africa is played as much on as off the pitch. Stadiums are a symbol of the battle for political freedom; economic opportunity; ethnic, religious and national identity; and gender rights. Alongside the mosque, the stadium was until the Arab revolt erupted in late 2010 the only alternative public space for venting pent-up anger and frustration. It was the training ground in countries like Egypt and Tunisia where militant fans prepared for a day in which their organization and street battle experience would serve them in the showdown with autocratic rulers. Soccer has its own unique thrill – a high-stakes game of cat and mouse between militants and security forces and a struggle for a trophy grander than the FIFA World Cup: the future of a region. This blog explores the role of soccer at a time of transition from autocratic rule to a more open society. It also features James’s daily political comment on the region’s developments. Contact: incoherentblog@gmail.comView my complete profile